竹莊詩話

Zhúzhuāng shīhuà 竹莊詩話

Bamboo Manor Remarks on Poetry by 何谿汶 (撰)

About the work

The Zhúzhuāng shīhuà 竹莊詩話, in twenty-four juǎn, is a late Southern Sòng compilation that hovers between two genres of literary criticism: a shīhuà 詩話 (remarks on poetry) and a zǒngjí 總集 (anthology). For each poem treated, Hé Xīwèn 何谿汶 (hào Zhúzhuāng jūshì 竹莊居士) first cites the prior critical comments — drawn from earlier shīhuà, bǐjì, and personal collections — and then appends the full text of the poem itself. This double presentation, original-plus-evaluation, was an innovation of the late Sòng critical tradition: it allowed the reader to test the verdict against the verse. The Sìkù editors recognised the same format in the contemporaneous Shīlín guǎng jì 詩林廣記 of Cài Zhèngsūn 蔡正孫 (KR4i0045), with the difference that Cài places critical remarks after the poem and Hé places them before. Hé’s date is not fixed; the Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì records the work in twenty-seven juǎn under his name, and the Sìkù editors are confident it is a Sòng-period work; the modern catalog accordingly assigns 宋, and a Southern Sòng compositional window is the safest bracket.

Tiyao

Zhúzhuāng shīhuà, twenty-four juǎn. The author’s name is not given. Qián Zēng’s 錢曾 Dúshū mǐnqiú jì 讀書敏求記 names him “Zhúzhuāng jūshì”, of unknown date. He scoured ancient and contemporary critical writings on poetry, setting the critical remarks at the head of each entry and appending the full poem after — making it one of the finest of the shīhuà. The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì records a Zhúzhuāng shīhuà in twenty-seven juǎn by Hé Xīwèn 何谿汶 — surely the same book; the present text has only twenty-four juǎn, and the discrepancy is unresolved. Either three juǎn were lost in transmission, or a later hand consolidated the work, or the Sòng shǐ miscopied 四 (“four”) as 七 (“seven”) — there is no way to decide. That it is a Sòng work, however, is not in doubt. In structure it closely resembles Cài Zhèngsūn’s 蔡正孫 Shīlín guǎng jì 詩林廣記 (KR4i0045): both are nominally shīpíng (critical comments on poetry) but function in practice as anthologies, letting the reader test the verdict against the original — clearly preferable to those critics’ compilations that quote only a single line or couplet, or that name a poet and a poem-title without revealing the actual diction. Hé’s only minor variation from Cài is that Cài places the comments after the poem, while Hé places them before. Among Hé’s quoted sources are the Wǔjīng shī shì 五經詩事, the Ōugōng yúhuà 歐公餘話 (the supplementary shīhuà materials of Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修), the Hóng Jūfǔ shīhuà 洪駒父詩話 (of Hóng Chú 洪芻), the Pān Zǐzhēn shīhuà 潘子真詩話, the Tóngjiāng shīhuà 桐江詩話, the Bǐmò xián lù 筆墨閒錄, Liú Cìzhuāng’s 劉次莊 Yuèfǔ jí 樂府集, and Shào Gōngxù’s 邵公序 Yuèfǔ hòu lù 樂府後錄 — none of which survives in independent transmission. Likewise the discussions of poetry in the Lǚshì tóngméng xùn 呂氏童蒙訓 (by Lǚ Běnzhōng 呂本中) have been excised from currently circulating re-cut editions; the present book preserves their substance. Further, it was compiled at the end of the Sòng when good early editions of poetry collections still circulated. For example, the Hàn anonymous Jiāo Zhòngqīng qī shī 焦仲卿妻詩 (“The Wife of Jiāo Zhòngqīng” — the Kǒngquè dōngnán fēi 孔雀東南飛) — the Míng moveable-type print of the Yùtái xīn yǒng 玉臺新詠 wrongly inserts the two lines “Jiànqiè liú kōng fáng, xiāngjiàn cháng rì xī” 賤妾留空房，相見嘗日稀 (“This humble consort is left in an empty chamber, days of seeing one another are rare”), an error transmitted to the present day. In fact Guō Màoqiàn’s 郭茂倩 Yuèfǔ shī jí 樂府詩集 and Zuǒ Kèmíng’s 左克明 Gǔ yuèfǔ 古樂府, as well as the older Yùtái xīn yǒng, all lack these two lines — and the present book also lacks them, corroborating the case. So even where the included poems are familiar, the book has textual value.

Abstract

The Zhúzhuāng shīhuà belongs to the late Southern Sòng moment at which the shīhuà genre — under three centuries of development since Ōuyáng Xiū’s 歐陽修 Liùyī shīhuà 六一詩話 — was beginning to fuse with the zǒngjí and the bǐjì lèishū into a new hybrid: the “critically annotated poetry anthology”. Hé’s procedure is to take a poem, quote in full the prior critical pronouncements from earlier shīhuà and miscellaneous sources, and then place the entire poem after, so that the reader can test critique against text. This format is the single most important contribution. Hé draws on a remarkable range of late Northern and Southern Sòng critical writings, many of which survive only through his quotation — including the Hóng Jūfǔ shīhuà (= Lěngzhāi yè huà materials by Hóng Chú), the Pān Zǐzhēn shīhuà, the Tóngjiāng shīhuà, the Bǐmò xián lù, Liú Cìzhuāng’s Yuèfǔ jí, and Shào Gōngxù’s Yuèfǔ hòu lù. For all of these the Zhúzhuāng is among the most important indirect transmission witnesses.

The book is recorded in the Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì under the name Hé Xīwèn 何谿汶, with the extent given as 27 juǎn — three more than the received version. The discrepancy is unexplained; the Sìkù editors offer three hypotheses (transmissional loss, later consolidation, or a Sòng shǐ miscopy of 四 → 七) and decline to choose. Hé’s own dates are unknown: Qián Zēng (in Dúshū mǐnqiú jì) confessed he could not place him. CBDB id 17558 records him without lifedates. The catalog assigns him to the Sòng without specifying a window; given Hé’s apparent acquaintance with Lǚ Běnzhōng’s Tóngméng xùn (mid-12th c.), his use of “old recensions” of Yùtái xīn yǒng (Sìkù: “compiled at the end of the Sòng”), and his structural parallel with Cài Zhèngsūn’s 1289 Shīlín guǎng jì, the late Southern Sòng (i.e. ca. 1200–1279) is the defensible bracket adopted here.

The Zhúzhuāng shīhuà was lost in independent transmission by the early Qīng — the Sìkù edition was reassembled from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典. The Sìkù version has consequently been the standard ever since. Its principal textual interest, beyond its preservation of otherwise-lost shīhuà, lies in (i) its early reading of the Jiāo Zhòngqīng qī shī (the Kǒngquè dōngnán fēi), used by modern editors as one of the witnesses against the spurious Míng Yùtái interpolation; and (ii) its retention of Lǚ Běnzhōng’s Tóngméng xùn shī lùn in a state earlier than the bowdlerised Míng re-cut.

Translations and research

• Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, Sòng shī-huà kǎo 宋詩話考 (Zhōnghuá, 1979) — bibliographical reconstruction of Sòng shī-huà, with an extensive section on the Zhú-zhuāng shī-huà as a quotation source.
• Cài Zhèn-chǔ 蔡鎮楚, Zhōng-guó shī-huà shǐ 中國詩話史 (Húnán wén-yì, 1988; rev. 2001) — chapter on Southern Sòng quotational shī-huà.
• Zhāng Bóběi 張伯偉, Zhōng-guó gǔ-dài wén-xué pī-píng fāng-fǎ yán-jiū 中國古代文學批評方法研究 (Zhōnghuá, 2002) — discusses the Zhú-zhuāng and Shī-lín guǎng jì together as the leading examples of the late-Sòng “anthology-cum-criticism” hybrid.
• Modern punctuated edition: Hé Xī-wèn 何谿汶, Zhú-zhuāng shī-huà, ed. Cháng Zhèn-guó 常振國 et al. (Rénmín wén-xué, 1984).

Other points of interest

The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì attribution to “何谿汶” is the only external evidence for the author’s name. Some Qīng catalogers, following Qián Zēng, read the name with 谿 as a personal-name graph; others (including CBDB) treat 谿 as an honorific style or hào-element and reduce the míng to 何汶 (with 竹莊 as his hào). Both readings are current in modern scholarship; the form 何谿汶 is preferred here as it is the form transmitted by the catalog tradition.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5 (literary criticism / shīhuà).
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q11067366 (竹莊詩話).